Deeplinks Blog posts about Transparency

A Merged Entity Will Have Twice the Incentive to Act as an Internet Gatekeeper

On October 22, AT&T announced it had reached a deal to acquire Time Warner, setting in motion one of the largest vertical mergers in telecommunications history. Not surprisingly, Congress has begun raising concerns. In particular, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to review it with an eye toward the potential for anti-competitive practices—such as carrier-directed, content-discriminatory zero-rating plans.

Should patent lawsuits filed in federal courts be hidden from the public? We don’t think so, especially where a patent owner may be suing multiple people based on the same claim. Apart from the general principle that legal processes should be open to the public whenever possible, as a practical matter sealed filings prevent other people under legal threat from the same person from learning information that may be crucial to their own defense.

You probably don’t expect the government to log and track your personally identifying information, despite having broken no laws, just because you attended an event at the fairgrounds. That would be preposterous in the Land of the Free.

But, according to the Wall Street Journal, federal agencies have joined forces with local police to deploy automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology at gun shows, with the aim of collecting attendees' plate information—without an explicit target. Gun show patrons are typically concerned about their Second Amendment rights, but what about the First Amendment?

If we don’t speak up now, the days when we can walk around with our heads held high without fear of surveillance are numbered. Federal and local law enforcement across the country are adopting sophisticated facial recognition technologies to identify us on the streets and in social media by matching our faces to massive databases.